


pitter patter

by snapspark



Series: distant thunder [3]
Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 20:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8299888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snapspark/pseuds/snapspark
Summary: “My lady,” Hyun declares gravely. “I think…Kim Yoosung is stressed through the roof and about to capsize.”Kaeul hears it in Seven’s voice: Mayday! Mayday!Yoosung's going through another rough time, and Zen/MC try their best to heal him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've named the MC of my story 'Kaeul', which means autumn and is in fact a real name.
> 
> (hyung and noona are korean honorifics for those older than you.)

 

 

Kaeul wakes up that morning to the muffled sound of sizzling, and a quiet phone conversation from the living room.

Her classes start late on Fridays, so she’s used to waking up with the sun high and her boyfriend long gone. She pushes the door open to find him flipping eggs by the kitchenette, phone in one hand and spatula in the other.

“—That’s what I’m saying, it’s not an excuse, you know that.”

He tucks the phone briefly between his ear and shoulder to reach for the salt. Kaeul has made her way over and takes the spatula from him. He kisses her thanks, then motions with a finger to _shhh_.

She nods and peppers the eggs. Hyun leans back against the counter, his brows knitted, eyes on his feet as he concentrates on the faint static voice Kaeul hears is speaking rapidly, no less agitated than Hyun’s own.

“I told you months and months ago—forget it. What can you do now?”

She brings the eggs over to the table with the fried rice he made, and some pickled dishes from the jars in the fridge. Hyun sits down across, pouring the orange juice.

“I know you don't want to, but at this point? The best you can do now is damage control. I gotta go, hang in there, alright? Hm, bye.”

Hyun puts his phone down and lets out a deep sigh.

Kaeul stops dividing her egg and looks at him, waiting. He runs a hand down his face, gaze flickering up to hers. “It’s Yoosung.”

“Yoosung? What’s up?”

“Babe, are you free after class?”

“Today? Yeah?”

“I’ll pick you up then. Let’s go on a field trip.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Where to, Captain Ryu?”

“My lady,” He declares gravely. “I think…Kim Yoosung is stressed through the roof and about to capsize.”

Kaeul hears it in Seven’s voice: _Mayday! Mayday!_

 

* * *

On the evening drive there, Hyun gives her a more detailed briefing about the situation.

A week ago Yoosung received an email from his school about his poor attendance in a class he had to take for requirements, warning any further absences will result in a fail. The next day Yoosung did haul himself to class, but the professor carelessly marked him absent again, and now he has to explain to his advisor in person. The email snapped him out of a daze, and it seemed he suddenly realized how quickly his time was counting down—it was almost finals, he doesn’t know the material and is doubting his major now, more than ever.

“Watching him like this makes me sad,” Hyun said, eyes on the road.

To Kaeul, the RFA members had never seemed extremely close. They were family in a way that reminded her of her own: loving and supportive, yet too distinct from one another to truly empathize. Hyun had never mentioned anything, but Kaeul could guess that worries for Yoosung, who seemed to have no one in his life but the five of them, had its own special weight in Hyun’s mind.

Their universities are on the opposite sides of town. By the time they arrived at Yoosung’s apartment, the street lamps are lit. A gentle evening breeze blows across the lobby while they wait for the elevator, their hands linked.

It feels so nice, being here with Hyun on a Friday night. She can’t help but smile at him.

They find Yoosung’s room based on Hyun’s memory. “I doubt he’ll be out right now, but he doesn’t know we’re coming…” Three knocks on the door. “Yoosung?”

Kaeul sticks her ear to the door. There’s nothing.

“Yoosung?”

“What if he’s gaming with headphones on?”

_“Who is it?”_

The voice comes from behind them. They turn to see Yoosung round the corner of the hallway, two plastic bags in his hands from the convenience store across the street, looking startled. Kaeul takes a moment to realize Hyun is staring back at him with the same shock.

“It’s us…” His voice trails off. As Yoosung comes to open the door, Kaeul watches Hyun’s eyes go cold. Yoosung must see it too. He looks away, mouth pressed into a thin line.

She’s still wondering what it is when as soon as the door closes behind them, Hyun flicks on the light, pulls off the beanie on Yoosung’s head and grabs him by the arm.

“Stop—”

Hyun takes the bags from him. Caught under the bleached light, Yoosung’s face looks pallid. Hardly noticeable before are shadows where there shouldn't be. His dark roots are growing out, his hair a dry mess, and even the X shaped clips which unfailingly highlight his youthful charm are absent from this look of zero energy and effort.

Hyun’s hand around the sleeve of his hoodie seems to clutch at nothing. He lets go.

Yoosung yanks his bags back. “What the hell, hyung?”

“I—don’t know why I did that. Sorry.”

They watch as Yoosung walks past them. He turns around half way, looking dispiritedly at them. “What are you guys doing here?”

Hyun gulps, because that look shuts him up, along with any of the harsh scolding he had in mind.

“We were a little worried about you, Yoosung,” Kaeul says quietly. “This doofus here kind of explained to me what happened, and we thought we’d come see you.”

Yoosung’s eyes light up a little. He can’t hate the idea of having company, especially not now when he realizes Hyun must have known he needed it. He goes a little red.

“It’s fine, come in. My room looks like crap though, so I’m gonna clean up a bit.” He looks at Hyun and seems to want to say something else, but doesn’t in the end.

The living room is fine, though a little barren, but when they make it to his room Hyun sucks in a harsh breath past his teeth.

The room is bright with color, posters and decor on the walls emulating the cheerful feel of the Yoosung they know, yet against the rest of the scene they feel like a desperate attempt to preserve some semblance of humanity. His desk is a clustered mess of books and paper, precariously stacked. There are clothes strewn everywhere, the laundry basket already collapsed, drowned. The trashcan by his desk is stuffed full, the floor around it littered with tissues and other scraps of things. There are stacks of lunch boxes by the wall, tied up with the bags they were purchased in.

They hover by the door. Yoosung looks around for a bag and starts to gather all his trash.

Hyun picks up a receipt lying by the door. It’s 50 dollars worth of pre-packaged meals and snacks, and he’ll bet Yoosung’s haul this time is enough to last him another week just like this. “When was the last time you left the room?” He crunches the paper into a ball.

Yoosung doesn’t respond. He looks helpless and upset, like a child caught cheating with no good excuse.

“Why didn’t you say anything to us if you were this much of a mess already?” As soon as Hyun said it he knew he chose the wrong words.

“Can you not come here just to criticize me?” Yoosung stops altogether, like he’s on the verge of giving out, and Hyun curses himself. “I know how bad this is, hyung.”

“That’s not what I—I wanted to say you could’ve told us sooner—”

“I only didn’t because I didn’t want you to come and see me like this. I’ll be fine, hyung, I know I can do better than this. I just kept telling myself I’ll clean up and get it together, but it’s just…so hard.” He sits down on his bed, eyes welling up involuntarily.

Seeing Yoosung like this really does strike a chord in her.

Kaeul comes to sit by him. “Yoosung, how about this? Save your food for tomorrow, let’s clean up your place together and go somewhere nice for dinner. Maybe you just need a change of scenery.”

Hyun likes it. “We can go to KTV afterwards. Let’s hang out tonight, yeah?”

Yoosung hops up, all his troubles momentarily forgotten. “Really?! You drove here, right? Can we go to a dog café?”

The two of them exchange looks across the room, thinking more or less the same thing.

“You’re like a big puppy.” Kaeul laughs.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Hyun comes to pull Yoosung’s hood over him, ruffles his head. “I’ll take us anywhere you fancy. But only after we’ve deal with all this garbage.”

  

* * *

  

By the time they return, it’s almost one in the morning. They’re stuffed from barbeque and street food, Yoosung has been spiritually healed by dogs, Hyun’s got himself buzzed from Soju and tired, collapsing onto the sofa. Yoosung had let them know it was more than fine for them to stay over, and so Hyun has tries multiple times to rope Kaeul into cuddling to sleep on the couch with him, but she hands him a pillow to hug in her place.

“Who was the one that said he wanted to have a good talk with Yoosung? We haven’t even talked about anything yet and you’re already passing out.”

“Mmm? He’s fine now, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” she pinches his nose, and pulls the blanket over her boyfriend, who is in reality also just a big puppy, “the dogs were more helpful than you tonight.”

Yoosung laughs. Hyun grabs her hand and brings it to his lips. “Spare me, sweet lady.”

She lets him doze off finally. “He had a late night in the studio yesterday,” she tells Yoosung, following him into his room, “his latest musical is recording a studio album as well for the tracks. He was excited because it’s his first time on CD.”

“I see,” Yoosung says, and the door closes behind them, with a shuddering click.

It’s the first time it occurred to them that with Hyun asleep, they were strangely alone.

To Kaeul, she wonders if it’s trust, from someone as possessive as Hyun, or just the lack of a sense of threat from Yoosung that allowed this to happen.

To Yoosung, it’s petrifying. Once the thought found him, he couldn’t escape. He stiffly offers her a seat in his usual chair, but she asks if it’s ok to sit on the bed. He chuckles and says sure, but his pulse is quickening trying to remember the last time he was ever alone with a girl in a room and coming up blank.

 _Not now, please_ , he chants inside his mind, trying to figure out how to act. _Not her._

“Um—maybe we should go to sleep as well? You don’t have to feel pressured to talk to me, I’m really okay. 

“You don’t mind, do you?”

“No, of course not. If you’re okay with it, I don’t mind at all.”

As cute as it was, she didn’t want to make him any more flustered than necessary. They had to start somewhere.

“Are you going to be alright not playing League the whole night?”

His eyes open wide. “I’m surprised you brought it up...Oh no, I didn’t want to think about it.”

She feels a little bad, setting him up. “This is a secret, but…until two years ago, I used to play too.”

“No way, really?! Can I see? Here.”

She’s smiling as she stands, hovers beside Yoosung’s chair as he opens the client. Yoosung’s body tenses, sensing her so close. He gives her the keyboard to type in her account, and his jaw drops as it actually goes through.

“You never told me!”

“Surprised? I used to rank high plat two seasons ago, in first year. I used to play a lot of AD.” She leans against the wall. She lets Yoosung flip through her profile, look through her champions and skins, two year old match history gathering dust.

“I’m mostly mid or jungle…” Yoosung’s speechless. He’s not even sure Hyun knows. “We…we should duo together sometime! Can I add you?” But he’s already typing his username in the search bar.

When she doesn’t respond, he looks over to find her smiling sadly at him.

“It’s not actually that fun, isn’t it?”

“I-it’s alright.” But Yoosung leans back, eyes on his lap. Kaeul gets the sense this is not the first time this thought crossed his mind. “No. You’re right. I’m not really addicted, I just can’t really stop at this point.”

“It’s hard, I know. But you have to try.”

“Trying is hard, noona.”

“I know.”

“You do? I thought you would be like Zen hyung, telling me all I had to do was go out and do something like exercise.”

“No, I believe you.”

She does. She doesn’t know how to tell him she knows that feeling like she was only one step ahead of it, like it never fully goes away, an unsolvable conundrum that you learn to live around. What it’s like to have no motivation to live, where existing feels like a dull kind of agony, unreal and robotic, every moment you’re not distracted by a game. Where doing the simplest tasks like taking out the trash or taking a shower or eating feels like a chore, waste of energy and meaningless.

“Zen, Jaehee…they’re always telling me to take a step and make a change, but that takes so much energy I already don’t have, and no matter how much I put into making myself appear well and happy, I still feel empty and lost.”

In reality, she knows Hyun sees it too. Hyun knew that exercise was just his own way of staying sane, that he wasn’t in a place to judge.

“It’s hard for your Zen hyung to understand this, but it’s true that he means well and that he tries.”

“Do _you_ understand?”

Yoosung turns to watch her, eyes crystal clear. Kaeul feels a knot in her throat. She’s still learning slowly how to empathize, learning to share herself bits at a time, but Yoosung’s honest and desperate gaze makes her feel trapped. Hyun could sense enough to give her this breathing space, but within a week’s time the balance Yoosung has upheld for years is tipping all at once, the weight of his wasted time collapsing onto him, each strike of the clock now fatal, and he’s grasping at anyone to catch him from his fall.

_“He hasn’t been this bad since Rika died.”_

She couldn’t be his Rika, she knew. She could sense the longing painfully clear in the air between them, forgives him for what she knows he can’t control.

“Come sit with me, Yoosung.”

Kaeul sits down against the wall. Yoosung joins her with his arms tight around his legs, face buried into his knees like he would rather be anywhere else.

“I’m probably a bad substitute for…who you wish I was, but…”

Yoosung moans into his knees. “I’m so obvious, aren’t I? I’m so sorry.”

She laughs softly. “Wanna hear a story about me?”

  

* * *

 

It’s 3 AM when the door to Yoosung’s room opens, and when Kaeul walks out she finds Hyun wide awake on the couch, a glass of water in one hand, watching TV with the sound muted.

Momentary panic. She wonders if he heard, if he didn’t hear, what he was thinking if he didn’t hear, if he was trying as hard to trust as she was trying to hide for a different reason. But Hyun turns around and notices her, and the familiar grin is back on his face. Her heartbeat calms a little.

“Sorry, we kept you up.”

“It’s fine, babe. I woke up on my own a while ago, but you were gone and I was very lonely.”

“I’m here now and ready to sleep again—whoa!”

He pulls her down with him, their bodies fitting snugly and legs tangling in the narrow space, her back against his chest.

“Any plans for tomorrow?”

Kaeul feels a kiss on the crown of her head.

He doesn’t say anything else.

“Hyun?”

She wants to turn to look at him, but for some reason he’s hugging her tight enough that it’s hard to breathe.

 

* * *

 

After making sure Yoosung ate a hearty brunch, they set out on their way home.

Hyun’s heating the engine in the parking lot while Kaeul says her goodbyes and last minute counseling by the entrance.

He drums his fingers on the wheel, unable to settle the feeling in his chest.

Hyun hadn’t meant to overhear.

In the dead of night, when he could hear the rain and cars outside, the pipes in the walls, the soft whirr of Yoosung’s CPU through the wall.

Their gentle voices was just a soft audible buzz, easy to drown out with a little sound, but that went both ways. He wouldn’t risk them hearing the TV. He didn’t want to stop them.

He drives them home through a light rain.

“I talked with Yoosung a bit last night.”

“Oh yeah?” He says. While she was doing that, he thinks, he had been sitting there deciding that this was one of those things that would make her happier if she didn’t know, and that he was ready to try his damn best to hear about it for the very first time, when the day comes.

“I think Yoosung trusts me now, for one reason or another…if he believes I understand what he’s going through, maybe now he’ll actually listen to some of the advice we give him.” 

Hyun comes to a stop before a light. He turns to look at her, lifts a hand to caress the back of her head.

“You’re incredible, you know that? You’re so good at understanding all kinds of people, you get along with anyone well. I love that.”

She leans into his touch. “Still, I don’t have your charisma.”

Hyun thinks about it. “It’s true that my natural charms makes getting along with people easy, but it’s really nothing deeper than that. Most of the time it’s making myself agreeable to people I really don’t like and don’t want to understand. You seem to see and accept a bit of everyone, like from a bird’s eye view.” _And from a distance_ , he thinks. “My girl is cool like that.”

She gives him a light bump on the arm with her fist, trying to hide her grin.

“On the other hand, Yoosung…”

Hyun lets out a long sigh through his nose. “He’s so gullible, it makes me angry. How could his parents, how could Rika let him grow up so sheltered? She protected him so well from reality that it ended up hurting him instead.

“I really feel bad for the kid sometimes. Actually, since that one time in the chat room he said I didn’t know what it’s like to live without purpose, I’ve been thinking about it.

“What would I be if I didn't have my dream to work for? I know I could get through life with my looks, I wouldn’t like it, but I can do it until I find something better. I could charm my way into jobs, I could be like that shirtless tofu boy on the street, I could even do decent work as a salesman. But Yoosung’s just so honest it’s vulnerable, he can’t tough it out and be happy the same way I can, it’s just not him. He’s imprinted on Rika so much, he thought she was perfect and magic, he’s so full of admiration he has to live inspired by someone else. I admit it’s a lovable personality, but he becomes pathetically dysfunctional when there’s no one there to love and encourage him.”

Hyun takes a deep breath, easing into a stop. “But I can’t hate that about him. It’s so rare nowadays to find kids so pure.”

“He really is like an abandoned puppy.” She huffs.

“Right? It was like Rika just abandoned him. She must have known this would happen, she was a sharp one. It feels like she just didn’t care, and that makes me angry.” 

They pull into the parking lot of their building.

“I think Yoosung will pull through,” she says. “Even without Rika, the RFA is here for him in the end.”

Hyun holds her hand as he pulls them towards the exit of the lot. Outside the barred gates, the sky is clearing up.

“I’m so glad you’re mine and not anyone else’s, you know? If you were Yoosung or Seven’s girl, I’d steal you away at all costs.” 

She laughs. “You jealous freak,” and shoves at him.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> in this AU i decided to write LOLOL as actual league of legends which i know too much about  
> plus developers making yoosung's character aotfa taric is just straight up troll
> 
> inspired by the midnight conversation of the 3rd day of deep route.


End file.
